Party Messages Research Articles

Playing the Game on the World Wide Web

'Celebrate - do it Safely' is a project aimed at reducing youth alcohol-related harm on the Central Coast, New South Wales (NSW). The primary focus for 2003 was to use the world wide web and the website www.celebratesafely.com.au to raise awareness and reinforce the message of how to party safely to young people. A creative, interactive website was set up to be a local and reliable source of information regarding the risks associated with alcohol misuse. It was supported by a steering committee with diverse representation from key organisations. Content pages and links were developed to ensure access to information and contact details were simple and comprehensive. Topics such as a safe party checklist, safe driving, safe sex and protection from violence were included. Games and competitions emphasised the safe party message with clever actions and graphics created within a virtual party environment. The website was promoted by distribution of postcards throughout the school network. Radio campaigning, plus display of posters and banners throughout the area, raised the profile in the wider community. Key rings were given to young people along with free 'mocktails' to reinforce the message of safe partying. There has been an increase in website hits from 758 in 2002 to more than 65,000 in 2003. Written feedback from young people suggests the content and format is well designed for the target group. Promoting the message of safe celebration on the world wide web is an effective way of raising awareness in a local community about safe partying.

Orchestrating Party Talk: A Party-Based View of One-Minute Speeches in the House of Representatives

Previous studies of House members' speech-giving behavior treat the behavior as a product of members' individual goals. By uncovering leadership memoranda soliciting member participation in one-minute speech giving, I find, first, that parties significantly structure one-minute speech giving, with party-orchestrated message campaigns accounting for about one-third of the speeches given. Second, I find that a party-based explanation illuminates individual members' speech-giving behavior. Ideological proximity to the party leadership and party organizational factors strongly influence a member's willingness to be “on message.” These findings have important implications for studies of both party message politics and members' speech-giving behavior.

Bush Cabinet Nominations: How Will They Fare in the Senate?

Shortly after the election, President George W. Bush initiated a major restructuring of his cabinet. The post-election weeks have been filled with the drama of the selection process: who was in, who was out, whom would the President choose to fill the empty slots? Come January, the drama will move to Capitol Hill, for the hearings, floor speeches and votes that make up the Senate confirmation process. A Senate tradition of deferring to Presidents on their selections – particularly for Cabinet appointments – has lost strength, and instead has been replaced by a practice of opposition party Senators using nominations to attack the President and his party and hone their opposition party message for mass consumption. This paper looks at President Bush’s new Cabinet appointments in light of these developments in the confirmation process, and offers some predictions for what will happen in January.

Election Campaigning on the WWW in the USA and UK

This article is a comparative analysis of British and American parties and candidate election campaigning on the World Wide Web during the Presidential and General Elections of 2000 and 2001, respectively. The central questions are twofold: (1) Do parties differ across the two systems in terms of how they use the Web as a campaign tool? (2) Does the Web promote a more balanced or equalized exposure for party messages than other media? A combination of interview data, content analysis of sites and analysis of online and offline media coverage of the election is used to investigate these questions. Conclusions are drawn about the similarity of Web campaigning across the two countries and about the increasing dominance of the major parties, particularly in the UK.